When The US Economy Tanked, I Moved To China And Never Looked Back

When I moved abroad three and a half years ago for work, it
wasn’t really part of my original life plan.

My partner, Alex, and I made the decision to leave the United
States over sushi one night in our Brooklyn neighborhood based
largely on our circumstances at the time.

I was unhappy at my job. Our landlord wasn’t going to renew our
apartment lease. The economy had just tanked. We didn’t have
children. And we both had a desire to try something new after
living in New York City for six years.

WANT MORE?

So the choice was made: Alex would request a transfer through his
company to their offices in Shanghai, China. We’d stay six
months. Perhaps a year, at most.

The decision was as strategic as it was born out of a sense of
adventure—we figured that both of us could advance our careers in
Asia, where there was a surfeit of opportunity and a shortage of
talent. Plus, we hoped that working (and saving) in Asia for a
few years would put us in a better position when we returned to
the U.S. to eventually buy a house, and possibly adopt a child.

We weren’t the only ones in this position. The State Department estimates that 6.3 million
Americans are studying or working abroad—the largest number ever
recorded. And even more plan to go: Two years ago, only 1% of
Americans planned to move overseas. Today, five times as many are thinking
about relocating abroad.

A move of this magnitude, however, is never quite that
straightforward. And, if I’ve learned anything after three
international moves in three years (and counting …), plans have a
way of changing once you finally decide to pull up roots.

Our Big Great Britain Move

The first hiccup in our well-conceived plan was a change in
destination. “Shanghai isn’t an option anymore,” Alex told me one
day, mere weeks before our scheduled departure. “But we can go to
London if we want!”

Lesson one in moving abroad: Learn to be flexible. The corporate
redirect wasn’t so drastic in the end—we were both more than
happy to go to England. Plus, neither one of us had cracked open
our Mandarin books.

Thinking that we were still leaving for a year, at most, we
packed up our apartment and moved nearly everything we owned into
a long-term storage facility in New Jersey, where the rates were
significantly cheaper than in Brooklyn. We only took with us what
we could fit into four giant duffel bags that could be checked on
the plane—sweaters were a priority, summer-wear not so much.

This made financial sense in the short-term—we saved money by not
shipping an entire household overseas, and many flats in London
could be leased with furniture. The tradeoff was saying a tearful
goodbye to our things, not knowing when we’d be able to use that
KitchenAid stand mixer again.

In London, we rented a tiny apartment for three months to start,
before deciding it was smarter to sign an actual lease on a
place—even though we didn’t know how long we’d be
staying. Not only would this be cheaper—short-term lets are
harder to come by and therefore priced higher—but it was also
important to feel like we had a home to mitigate the feeling of
being adrift somewhere unfamiliar. Plus, with a six-month break
clause in our lease, there wasn’t a huge risk financially.

Cost-wise, the British capital wasn’t as expensive as I’d feared.
The rent where we lived in East London was comparable to New
York, and we got more space for the money. There were other
life set-up costs—utilities, mobile phones, health-care plans,
the countless trips to IKEA—but they were roughly the same
expenses we would have paid living in America.

We learned quickly how to save on the small things in an
expensive city. I took the bus to work nearly every day, and
cooked at home more frequently than I did in New York—restaurants
were costlier in London, by and large. We also relied on
Skype for
phone calls home.

Our biggest expense was travel—we weren’t about to compromise
with all of Europe so close by! But we traveled wisely … most of
the time. Speed cameras on rural English country roads were
definitely a financial pitfall.

A Shanghai Surprise

After a year, Shanghai became an option again and we were faced
with yet another major life decision: Do we return to job
uncertainty in a shaky economy back in New York or uproot
ourselves once again and take a chance on Asia’s biggest
boomtown?

Three main factors were instrumental in steering us toward
China—sheer momentum, the excitement of a different kind of
adventure … and the fact that we had packed lightly.

Professionally, it made sense for both of us, as well. We had
opportunities in Shanghai that probably didn’t exist elsewhere
for the mere reason that every major global corporation wants a
stake in China these days—and Shanghai is the new gateway to the
country. Alex became a managing director at a consultancy that
was growing steadily and expanding. I was able to turn freelance
writing and editing into a successful small business—there were
far fewer English-speaking writers in Shanghai than in New York
or London, and foreign publications couldn’t get enough stories
from China.

Plus, we believed that we could save some money in China, too.
The cost of living in Shanghai was well below that of New York—or
most cities in the West, for that matter. A taxi ride might set
us back $2, and we could usually eat out for under $30 … for the
two of us. We even had the luxury of hiring
an ayi—a woman who cleaned and cooked for about
$150 per month. We never could have afforded this back home!

Bringing Brooklyn Abroad

When the time came earlier this year to decide if we wanted to
transfer yet again with Alex’s work to Singapore, the choice was
much easier to make. Although the physical act of moving never
becomes less tiring or onerous—I have come to loathe the sound of
packing tape being unrolled—and we have far more belongings now
than when we left Brooklyn (including an adopted street cat from
China named Hongbao), the idea of picking up and starting over
again is way less frightening. Singapore is also a city with
massive opportunities for foreigners, so we knew that we’d be
able to keep saving—even despite the fact that it has a higher
cost of living than Shanghai.

Three years into this journey, we also came to a very important
conclusion: We were tired of living out of duffel bags, and
wanted our KitchenAid stand mixer. So, for this move, we unpacked
the storage unit in Mahwah, and shipped our things to Singapore.

In some respects, it feels like our old life in Brooklyn again,
surrounded by our books, photos and well-worn furniture … except
for when the Asian koel (a Singapore bird with
a very distinctive cry) starts to sing in the morning, and
I’m wishing for just five more minutes of sleep.

Justin Bergman is a freelance writer currently based in
Singapore. He is a frequent contributor to TIME, The
New York Times and The Associated Press. He also teaches
through Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio.

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